Teachers at one of Denver’s poorest schools have discovered a key to improving student achievement that’s as easy as stepping out the door.

High-performing schools in affluent neighborhoods are usually buzzing with parents — moms and dads volunteering, chauffeuring or helping out in classrooms.

But at schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, the opposite tends to occur — many of them have little to no parental engagement. Indeed, teachers rarely see a parent in the building unless a kid is in trouble.

That’s why Fairview Elementary teachers are going to the families.

Every year, educators try to visit the homes of every child in the school — getting to know the families and discovering more about their students.

“This is all about relationship-building,” said Don Diehl, a fifth-grade teacher who has been visiting homes in the Sun Valley neighborhood for more than a decade. Last year, teachers made 277 visits to 145 households.

“For many parents who haven’t had good experiences with education, schools aren’t the most welcoming place,” Diehl said. “We are trying to change that.”

Teachers are paid $20 per visit for their door-to-door work. An annual grant from the National Education Association covers the tab.

Denver Superintendent Tom Boasberg is so impressed with the program that he’s offering $50,000 a year for a home-visit pilot program at four other elementary schools.

“That connection between families and schools and teachers is so vital,” Boasberg said. “You can’t just wait for parents to come to you. You have to go to the parents.”

Training for home visits

This week, teachers and parents from Munroe, Valverde, Barrett and Maxwell elementary schools are being trained by educators from the Sacramento, Calif.-based Parent-Teacher Home Visit Program.

“It’s not just about us empowering the family — it’s about school communities understanding their students and their families so they can adapt their styles,” said Carrie Rose, executive director of the home-visit program and training leader.

Researchers studying the 12-year-old program found that schools that successfully implemented it reported fewer discipline problems, better attendance and improved test scores.

Fairview teachers have been doing scheduled visits for about a decade, using the Sacramento model adopted by principal Norma Giron when she was hired.

Before Giron arrived, parent involvement was nonexistent, she said.

She credits the home visits for boosting the amount of time parents spend at Fairview, measured in such basic increments as back-to-school night. This year’s event probably brought in 150 people, she said.

After school this past Monday, Diehl and two other Fairview teachers walked from their building and into the subsidized housing projects in the Sun Valley neighborhood.

About 71 percent of families in the neighborhood, just south of Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium, live in poverty. Crime rates are high, and nearly 100 percent of Fairview’s students are poor enough to receive federal meal benefits. And the school ranks 53rd out of 69 elementary schools on DPS’s School Performance Framework, which tracks student academic improvement.

On Monday, children streamed out of the apartments, calling out to the teachers whose classrooms they had just left.

“Mr. Diehl!” “Miss Rohnert!”

“You walk through, and they think you are celebrities,” said Kendra Rohnert, a third- and fourth-grade teacher.

A family dressed in colorful African garb waved to the teachers, showing them that they were working on homework with their children. Diehl congratulated them on their newborn baby, their 10th child.

The teachers walked to the door of Erica Valdez, a 35-year-old single mother of four daughters who works nearly 40 hours at Goodwill Industries on County Line Road. Her commute is 90 minutes each way by bus.

Teachers welcomed

Loud music played in the duplex next door as Valdez welcomed the teaching team into her three-bedroom home.

Valdez and two of her daughters sat on a couch below a hanging rug depicting the face of Jesus. The teachers sat on chairs pulled from a stack by the front door.

Two of the children attend Fairview, and one goes to Rishel Middle School, which is closing. Valdez’s eldest daughter, who is 19, no longer lives with her.

The teachers asked about her family, where her fifth-grader will go to middle school and where her eighth-grader will go to high school.

Diehl learned why the girls don’t check out books from the library’s bookmobile: They had been late at returning the items and the fines were too expensive for the struggling family.

“What are your dreams for your girls?” Diehl asked Valdez.

“For them to get a good education, for them not to let anything hold them back,” she said. “Life is beautiful. I only got a taste of it. I want them to have it all.”

Jeremy P. Meyer was a reporter and editorial writer with The Denver Post until 2016. He worked at a variety of weeklies in Washington state before going to the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin as sports writer and then copy editor. He moved to the Yakima Herald-Republic as a feature writer, then to The Gazette in Colorado Springs as news reporter before landing at The Post. He covered Aurora, the environment, K-12 education, Denver city hall and eventually moved to the editorial page as a writer and columnist.

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